Some highly paid charlatans in the media think it’s absolutely fine to take a wild guess at the truth and then tell a couple of million people it’s cast-iron fact, just in case they might be right.

Marcus Luttrell -- Lone Survivor

How can I be expected to work with this charlatan?

Eoin Colfer -- Artemis Fowl

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"Charlatan!" exclaimed Alberto.

Jostein Gaarder -- Sophie’s World

I’m not a charlatan, I’m an actor—good or bad, an actor.

John Steinbeck -- Travels with Charley

Base thieves and charlatans!

Henry H. Neff -- The Maelstrom

I’m only a cave-dwelling charlatan.

Sabaa Tahir -- An Ember in the Ashes

My father said the doctor was a charlatan and this was why we needed to keep struggling against ignorance.

Malala Yousafzai -- I Am Malala

It was over my dead body that I let you degrade yourself by continuing to work with these charlatans, these horse doctors.

William Styron -- Sophie’s Choice

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He’d expected the sort of frothy, holy-rolling charlatan that he’d seen preaching near Torrance when he was a boy.

Laura Hillenbrand -- Unbroken

He went on, giving slow, full value to each word: "We called you an incompetent fool, a tyro, a charlatan, a swindler, an egomaniac…"

Ayn Rand -- The Fountainhead

I got this cordial at Rome, of an Italian charlatan — a fellow you would have kicked, Carter.

Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre

But he is now, and has always been, a liar, a charlatan and a crook.

Micheal Scott -- The Alchemyst

Even if we must sometimes appear as charlatans.

Ralph Ellison -- Invisible Man

Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was somewhat lifting the veil from the secret of the countess’ malady, an unwary young man ventured to express surprise that well known doctors had not been called in and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan who might employ dangerous remedies.

Leo Tolstoy -- War and Peace

He ran a long feature on George Vandeveer, charlatan attorney for the Wobbly defense in the Everett Massacre deliberations.

David Guterson -- Snow Falling on Cedars

Here are two signatures of the German text—in my opinion, the crudest charlatanism; it discusses the question, ’Is woman a human being?’

Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- Crime and Punishment

In reality he was a charlatan.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- One Hundred Years of Solitude

Would not he, the cad, the charlatan, attempt a more dramatic finish?

E.M. Forster -- A Room With A View

She has the necessary skills-she is no charlatan-but summoning spirits is exceedingly dangerous, and one does not embark upon it lightly.

Christopher Paolini -- Brisingr

I hasten to add, to anticipate possible misconception, that he was not the least of a charlatan.

Henry James -- Washington Square

This, he considered, was the only basis of solid instruction; all other means of education were mere charlatanism, and could produce nothing better than smatterers.

George Eliot -- The Mill on the Floss

A gift, a thing I sought not, for this crown The trusty Creon, my familiar friend, Hath lain in wait to oust me and suborned This mountebank, this juggling charlatan, This tricksy beggar-priest, for gain alone Keen-eyed, but in his proper art stone-blind.

Sophocles -- Oedipus the King

Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April.

F. Scott Fitzgerald -- This Side of Paradise

A fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the toreador.

Gustave Flaubert -- Madame Bovary

Scourge of the chicken-soup psychologists and the charlatans of his profession?

Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy

Dr. Jerome DuPont has the deep liquid eyes and intense gaze of a professional charlatan; but he smiles ruefully, and gives a dismissive shrug.

Margaret Atwood -- Alias Grace

You see, my dear Conway, we are not quacks or charlatans; we do not and cannot guarantee success; some of our visitors derive no benefit at all from their stay here; others merely live to what might be called a normally advanced age and then die from some trifling ailment.

James Hilton -- Lost Horizon

They implied that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless innovation for the sake of noise and show which was the essence of the charlatan.

George Eliot -- Middlemarch

He seems to see reflected in them a figure antic as a showman, a little wild: a charlatan preaching worse than heresy, in utter disregard of that whose very stage he preempted, offering instead of the crucified shape of pity and love, a swaggering and unchastened bravo killed with a shotgun in a peaceful henhouse, in a temporary hiatus of his own avocation of killing.

William Faulkner -- Light in August

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: ’This house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and—priests.

Rudyard Kipling -- Kim

Sam was the greatest charlatan in the memory of god or man.

Roger Zelazny -- Lord of Light

There were gypsies and showmen, shamans and charlatans.

Nicholas Evans -- The Horse Whisperer

Bobby Kennedy thinks LBJ is a political charlatan.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

"Allow me to warn you," interposed General Ivolgin, "that he is the greatest charlatan on earth."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Idiot

The time had come, Hamilton said, when "men of real integrity" must unite against all charlatans.

David McCullough -- John Adams

He was a charlatan but a successful charlatan, and in that was always something for the comic spirit to rejoice in.

W. Somerset Maugham -- Of Human Bondage

Too many charlatans.

Ted Dekker -- BoneMan’s Daughters

Go ahead and despise it in favor of some sort of hocus-pocus of insinuation and emotional charlatanry—and the Devil will definitely have you in his—

Thomas Mann -- The Magic Mountain

They did have a theory of morals and they tried to live by it (I should not have sneered at their motives) but their theory was wrong — half of it fuzzy-headed wishful thinking, half of it rationalized charlatanry.

Robert A. Heinlein -- Starship Troopers

Tired of the pain in his bones and the secret illness that only he perceived, he had decided it was time to be examined by foreign doctors; he had reached the premature conclusion that Latin doctors were all charlatans who were closer to sorcerers than scientists.

Isabel Allende -- The House of Spirits

And since I know of no heroes about More to be praised than the truly devout And nothing at all with greater appeal Than the holy fervor of saintly zeal, So too nothing could be more odious Than the white-washed face of a zeal that’s specious, Or these frank charlatans, seeking places, Whose false and sacrilegious double faces Exploit our love of God and make a game Of our reverence for Christ’s holy name.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere -- Tartuffe

…baskets said, "On St. Stefano’s Day I passed urine on a barbed-wire fence …." Or this from a sad, distraught coolie: "The morning after the Wednesday fast, I accidentally stepped over the cast-off water from a prostitute’s morning wash …." Ghosh listened, his eyes taking in the blister marks on the sternum which said the native healer had been consulted; he noted the thick speech and guessed that the uvula had probably been recently amputated on a second visit to the same charlatan.

Abraham Verghese -- Cutting for Stone

An outer show elaborated through centuries, and nothing but charlatanism and nonsense underneath," flashed through Miuesov’s mind.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Brothers Karamazov

The new Charlatans album.

Sophie Kinsella -- Confessoins of a Shopaholic

So the voice of the Devil whispers to me, ’If God will not help you,’ he says, ’mayhap I might …. " At first, she would not say how she had come by the charm, for the charlatan who had choused her out of a shilling for it had also told her that a death curse would come upon her if she told.

Geraldine Brooks -- Year of Wonders

…no one’s more unlucky with his guests!""Look what your man dragged in—this mangy trampscraping for bread and wine!""Not fit for good hard work,

the bag of bones—""A useless dead weight on the land!""And then this charlatan up and apes the prophet.""Take it from me—you’ll be better off by far—toss your friends in a slave-ship—""Pack them offto Sicily, fast—they’ll fetch you one sweet price!"So they jeered, but the prince paid no attention ….silent,…

Homer -- The Odyssey

Lady, saint or charlatan, he is returned.

Roger Zelazny -- Lord of Light

He was a charlatan but a successful charlatan, and in that was always something for the comic spirit to rejoice in.